


Repetitititition

by flambydelrabies



Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Haircuts, Healing from trauma, M/M, Post-Canon, discussion of suicide, it's all about trust babey!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28103946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flambydelrabies/pseuds/flambydelrabies
Summary: “Ah, c’mon. You should know after all this time, I’m weak against all that stuff abouttrust.”Turns out, letting go is easier than Zelos thought.
Relationships: Lloyd Irving/Zelos Wilder
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	Repetitititition

**Author's Note:**

> this was an experiment in stylized tense switching and flowing between scenes! Not beta read because it’s just a fun little test above all else that I decided to share (after all, the world always needs more zelloyd content). Dedicated to Chelsea @/ghostsandghouls, a good friend of mine and the admin who keeps the zelloyd server in line. Love ya.

At the day’s end, Zelos is certain of one thing, and one thing alone: he will never, and can never, under any circumstances, call the Wilder mansion home.

He’s ground to a halt within its walls just for tonight, merely because it’s quick and easy and Zelos knows he and Lloyd will pick up their journey once more the moment the sun rises. If he were being truthful, he’d say he’d rather seek shelter just about anywhere else-- but the manor is free, and he can’t resist the look on his sister’s face when the two of them come for a moment of reprise between clawing exspheres from the jaws of monsters.

"Well, home sweet home, right?" he says with a half-hearted grin, and even Lloyd can hear the _drip, drip_ of sarcasm from Zelos' words cauterizing against the ground. When they drop their bags to the tile floor of his childhood bedroom, he begins to think that the manor itself might just be cursed-- if nothing else, it must be haunted by ghosts whose only remaining traces are his parents' tombstones wasting away in the backyard. At the very least, such a prison is little more than a collection of others’ misfortune, and when he begins drifting to sleep that night, Zelos reckons that he might just be, too. A poor, unfortunate boy born to two people who never once loved each other, and then 

never

once

loved

_you either,” Mylene snarled at her husband, back when she still refused to lie down and accept that the Church of Martel’s holy binds had aborted any sense of purpose she once had. “I don’t love you, and I never will.”_

_“You don’t have to.” The Chosen’s slick tongue moved sharp enough to slice through bone. “All you have to do is bear my child, and then we’re both free to do whatever we please. Take a lover. I couldn’t care less.”_

_Mylene’s voice was sharp, once, before the chill of the manor and a life devoid of any semblance of love froze everything down to her frail heart. Her reply crackled like a whip and sparks flew from her mouth the moment she spoke._

_“You took everything from me. You, the Oracle-- everything!” She marched up the steps of the building she’d been forced to call home and into the nearest empty bedroom she could find, only to_

_collapse_

_herself_

_into_

bed, now, alright?” Lloyd begins, and in the same breath, he finds himself stifling a deep yawn. “I’m beat. It’s been a long day. Let’s go to bed.”

Zelos slinks the gloves from his wrists only to toss them into the oblivion of his room, the bed and sheets and tile streaked with pale moonlight streaming from the windows above. If he weren’t so terribly exhausted and just as many parts jaded, he’d call it picturesque.

“With ya there, hunny,” he draws out each word as if he picked them meticulously, and every syllable lingers on the tip of his tongue. When he moves at long last, he nearly tackles Lloyd to the bed, only to wrangle his own face into his partner’s chest. “See you in the morning, huh?” he asks, and Lloyd laughs in return because they both know they’ll be waking up in each other’s arms regardless.

There’s something to be said about how the Wilder mansion has never felt like home to him, a fact of which Zelos is _completely certain--_ maybe because it was never home to his mother, either, and perhaps that was just another trait he inherited from her rotten genes just like everything else. (Save for the red hair; that came from Father’s side of the family. He couldn’t have even been blonde, like Mylene or the Goddess herself.)

What he can be positive about, however, is that meeting Lloyd so long ago was the one, little thing that changed everything for him, the butterfly effect that drove him to be better and do better and live something other than another _lie._

He’s never really known what home is-- not in any way he could quantify, at least, save for the chill of the manor. But the moment Lloyd took him by the hand and said _‘I want you to live too, Zelos,’_ he could finally explain what such a foreign emotion felt like for the very first time, and that’s something he’s never been able to understand, so he grins and bears it only to

drift

off

to

sleep,

_\--and when he wakes up, everything is the same as it ever was, and so is he._

“Morning,” Lloyd murmurs into the crook of Zelos’ neck when they wake in the tangles of his fire-red hair; he swats it away in messy, careless motions to look upon Zelos’ face, eyes in a lull and a soft smile drawled across his face. Both relish these moments of peace, when everything settles and Zelos looks happy rather than like he wants to be anywhere else.

Zelos takes all the strength in his body and heaves himself from bed, wandering into the morning’s pale glow to seat himself in the chair by the window. He digs around his old desk with haste, each item still strewn the same way it was before he’d left on this journey, until he clutches his fingers around a hairbrush and runs it through the curls tumbling down his back.

Lloyd watches from afar with some sense of wonder etched into his face, taking careful note of the way the sunspots turn his hair from the colour of flame to the gentle tinge of the finest roses. It’s beautiful beyond words, and so is he; it takes moments for Lloyd to become overwhelmed by the sheer desire to know everything there is about Zelos, to discover each of the million little pieces that create the whole, and that’s when he realizes there’s a question he’s still never once asked.

“Y’know, I don’t think I’ve ever really asked before-- how long have you been growing your hair out for, Zelos?”

That’s when the other boy pauses, nearly letting the brush topple to the floor beneath him in surprise. He pauses, then takes in a sharp breath of air before saying anything else.

“Ha. I don’t even need to think about that one. I could tell you right down to the day.” Zelos’ voice grows frail as he speaks, so he stops entirely until he has a chance to take all that weakness and realign it into something he doesn’t despise. He wrings out any semblance of fragility before continuing. “Since the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month of the Tethe’allan calendar. The day my mother was murdered.”

Lloyd can’t tell if he finds himself more surprised by the answer or the fact that he talks of it so casually, as if he were speaking of no more than dinner plans. “Why?” he asks next, a question born from curiosity above anything else. “Not that… you need a reason. It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Y’know, love,” Zelos rotates in his chair like clockwork until he faces Lloyd, who lies in silence against the ornate bedframe-- “I think, after all these years, it’s probably time I talked about it.”

Stillness follows, and Zelos’ room turns dead quiet until the air is thick and dripping with tension. Lloyd then swallows and nods, as if beckoning for him to go on without saying a single word. It takes moments for Zelos to suck down the silence and oblige.

“That was the first attack on my life, you know. It wouldn’t be the last, either. They checked all my meals for poison after that, and--” he pauses, then chokes, like invisible hands constricting around his throat. “I stopped cutting my hair after my mother died, because I couldn’t handle the feeling of a blade against my throat.”

Lloyd can’t help but gasp and watches Zelos’ eyes close sharply, as if in pain. For a moment, time stands still, the lull broken only by the stutter of each breath heaving in their chests, the rhythm of a metronome echoing between them. Finally, Lloyd opens his mouth and speaks.

“Zelos, do you trust me?”

Lloyd’s words, sudden and pointed, hit Zelos like a hole in his head. How can they not? How can Lloyd ask something like that so brazenly after he’d torn himself open only moments ago? Still, he chooses not to let the confusion show, and instead, he cocks a smile and beams right back.

“Ah, c’mon. You should know after all this time, I’m weak against all that stuff about _trust._ ”

Lloyd stares at Zelos like he’s some wondrous thing, and maybe, even as starstruck as he is, that still isn’t far from the truth. He fumbles against the fabric of his dwarven clothes and tears a hunting dagger from the holster at his side, seating himself directly behind Zelos and clenching a lock of hair between his fingers. The other boy winces, the perfect harmony of both tranquility and despair, but he does not pull away.

“I thought, maybe… you might want to let go, you know? Now that it’s just the two of us… you know that I’d never do anything to hurt you.” Lloyd’s breath becomes progressively more frantic in his lungs as he speaks, but the same, steady conviction remains. To Zelos, it’s the only thing that matters.

“Well,” Zelos says back, the single word wrought with hesitation, “Now’s as good a time as any, really. Go for it, just, go slowly, okay? Do a little bit at a time. But do you mind if…” he trails off, his voice forlorn as though he were some sort of lost faun.

“Do you mind if I, maybe, talk about it while we do this? I mean, some of the stuff that happened to me back then.” He recomposes, eyes glazing, realigning the mask he knows he need not wear around Lloyd, of all people, yet can’t bear to abandon in moments like these. “Y’know, if you’re up for that, of course. You can say no.”

“Of course,” Lloyd echoes back with a fire inside him shining just as bright as the stands of red he clutches in his palm. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah.” Zelos counts each of his breaths as the dagger, paper-thin and sharp enough to slice through his skin like it were transparent, rests precariously against the nape of his neck. Before long, his mouth opens without his permission, the same as it ever does, but this time, it’s genuine.

“I became the chosen after my Father died. I still remember it like it was yesterday.” Zelos shudders as he talks and the _snip, snip_ of metal against mane rings shrill through his ears. “He wasn’t around long enough for me to know him, really. He took his own life when I was seven. But the day of the funeral,

there 

was

 _rain pounded against the cemetery sea like iron bullets, and for the first time in his life, Zelos felt himself unravel as his father’s casket descended down into the unwrought earth. He stood and watched artificial faces of pity whisper their_ ‘I’m sorry’ _s while they gossiped about his mother choosing not to attend, and surely, he began to realize that none of these people cared about the fact that he’d just lost his father, because he was no more than the Chosen to them._

_Chosen aren’t people. They are just that-- chosen. What good would their sympathies do?_

_Zelos stood and gripped his butler’s hand, and he didn’t have it in him to cry, but the raindrops that speckled against his cheeks and clouded his vision could have fooled any of the aristocrats whose apologies condescended above all else. He shed the thought, tore his gaze away from the grave marker, and looked upon Sebastian’s hollowed face instead._

_“Sebastian, what does ‘suicide’ mean?” he asked, and the innocence in his voice could have drawn tears from even the most faithful servants. His butler seemed taken aback by such a bold question, enough that his eyes drifted downcast._

_“What brings you to ask, Master Zelos?”_

_“Everyone says that’s how Dad died. I’ve never heard that word before.”_

_Sebastian’s voice grew taut for a moment alone as he looked upon the Chosen’s casket, and even the perfect butler could hardly contain his sorrow. “I’m afraid, Young Master, that some people are not born to be happy,” he finally said, and somehow, those words made Zelos understand even less._

_When he returned to the manor and collapsed in his bed, the emotions began spilling out at last, overflowing into something harsh and ugly that Zelos hated the very sight of. With his arms splayed out against silken sheets in a gilded prison, he_

_began_

_to_

_realize_

nobody really cared about what I thought,” Zelos says and watches a lock of strawberry hair fall to the floor. “It didn’t matter what I thought or what I felt, because nobody cared about Zelos. They cared about the Chosen.”

“I, uh…” Lloyd hesitates, a hand now gently planted against the redhead's shoulder. “I took off about a third of it, down to your neck. Do you want to keep going? I want to hear more, if you wanted to keep talking.”

“Can’t exactly stop now, yeah?” Zelos quips back, and he finds his voice growing passive only for a second. The more he speaks, the less he catches himself in the act of forgetting all those things haunting him, his own personal phantoms. “Is it alright if I keep going, too?”

Lloyd grips the next portion of Zelos’ hair between the tips of his fingers, resting the blade against the bones of his knuckles and pursing his lips. “Definitely. Ready?”

Zelos nods, wincing as each movement makes the remainder of his hair tug softly against Lloyd’s grasp. “Y’know, even beyond my old man dying, I never exactly had the best relationship with my mother, either. Everything about her was like ice, and I learned to hate the cold

long

before

her 

body

_pressed against the chair by the window facing the rose garden, Mylene rested a hand over her eyes and let the graying skies sap their shine. A loveless woman in a loveless castle, shackled to a son she never wanted and a life wasted in a cage. Some things nobody deserved to suffer from, not like she did-- but such was the cruel hand of fate gripped tightly around her throat._

_“Mother?” Zelos murmured as his shoes_ tap-tap-tapped _against the linoleum, a calculated rhythm birthed from unsteady feet. “Can we pick some roses today?”_

_Mylene rested two fingers at the bridge of her nose, and the moment she spoke, the grit and rasp of her voice sounded far away. He may as well have been invisible to her. “Sebastian, please remove this child from my sight.”_

_“M-mom?” he stuttered, but the sentence only died in midair. His body trembled as Sebastian took him by the hand, much as he did the day of his father’s wake._

_“Come now, Master Zelos. We will get one of the maids to accompany you to the garden, if you wish.”_

_Zelos’ ruby hair shook frenetically across his face as they left Mother’s study, and the weight of disappointment and sorrow burdened his body like a bruise that never healed._

_“I don’t want to go with the maids. I_

_only_

_want_

_my_

mom.” Each of Zelos’ words is short and clipped. “You never forget your mother’s love, or in my case, the lack of it.”

By the time he comes to, there’s enough red hair scattered and splayed against the floor to rival the damned shade of crimson lingering in his memories every night. Slowly, he reaches down and cups the stray locks in the palm of his hand before clenching it shut.

“Are we almost done?” Zelos asks, and he realizes quickly the way his voice dips low makes him sound far more upset than he intends to. Really, to his surprise, the sudden vivisection of his childhood traumas was making him feel lighter rather than eternally weighed down by corpses. 

Lloyd flashes a steady grin that he can’t see, only to curl his hand over Zelos’ and give a half-hearted squeeze. “Just one more strand to go. Just say the word, and--”

“I’m ready,” Zelos snaps back with haste, and each syllable leaves his mouth as though the breath has been knocked out of his lungs. He loves Lloyd far too much to stop now, and each strand of hair orphaned against the tile below is a piece of himself he hates scattered, gone, forever. When he looks down, he notices something is gone, too-- some kind of ache and hurt that’d lingered until it became routine dissipated at last.

“My mother died eventually, too. It’s just been me and this loveless mansion for as long as I can remember.” Zelos’ words pique, until he speaks as if he’s an intruder in his own home. “Her face, her smile, her eyes--”

Another pause wrought with tension as he stays there, waiting, letting the cold metal of Lloyd’s hunting dagger linger against his neck. He thinks of all the visions of her that plague his dreams and longs to sleep without

worry,

fear,

or 

_pain only lasted an instant when he saw his mother’s body unfurled against the snow and ice, watching as the flakes of pure white became tainted pale rose, bright red, then sickly scarlet. His knees buckled, eyes locked with the cloaked woman who’d cast the spell that took her life; she looked back with a smile that turned sharp, until the knights snatched her by the arms and dragged her snarling face from sight._

_“M-- mother?” Zelos stammered, only to feel his heart_ thump-thump _in his chest and all the way up to the base of his throat. It felt like someone had pierced an iron blade straight through his flesh, but as he ran to shake his mother’s mortal body and tell himself it was no more than a dream, it wasn’t his blood that stained the snow red._

_Mylene snaked a finger against his full, childlike cheeks, nearly as pale as the snow drifting from the sky, and when she looked up at him with blood blossoming from the corner of her mouth, every pause felt like a millenia._

_“You should never have--” she uttered through her teeth with a voice that rasped and gurgled, and he knew how that sentence ended long before the words even left her mouth. All he could do was shake and feel the chill of her dying hands echo down to his bones._

_“You should never have been born.”_

_His eyes widened, and for a moment, he forgot how to breathe; he watched as she spit blood from her ruby-red lips, and in that moment, he knew not just her life, but his,_

_was_

over...?” Zelos asks, and his pitch hikes upward at the tail end of the question. “Hello, earth to Lloyd. Is it almost over now?”

Lloyd shakes his head, knitting his brows together in confusion. “How can you tell me these things and immediately start smiling like that?” the other boy says with a lump heavy in his throat. A quick and steady snip resonates throughout the room, and he spins Zelos’ chair around to face the mirror of his lavish vanity. Lloyd can feel the intensity of Zelos’ breath even as far away as he is.

“Because talking about these things… it’s easier than I thought.” He stops, cocking his head to the left and watching his now-shaggy curls follow suit. Moments later, Zelos raises a hand to tousle it through his hair, the tips now resting gently at the nape of his neck. He smiles, and he doesn’t laugh, but comes close even still.

“And I guess I didn’t realize how much I was holding onto until I let it go.”

And then Lloyd looks upon Zelos, his heart skipping a beat at the sight of the immense smile painted across his face-- so wide, it can only have been lifted from his dreams. Lloyd loves him so much it nearly hurts, and Zelos has been fed so much affection he hardly finds himself able to accept it in return.

“C’mon, Lloyd, let’s go,” he says and takes the other boy’s gloved hand into his own. Lloyd steals a quick glance back before answering.

“Uh, where are we going?”

Zelos presses his hasty lips against Lloyd’s, and the words that follow are perhaps the most genuine words he’s ever spoken.

“Anywhere, so long as it’s with you.”

Lloyd is his home, and when all is said and done, it’s all he’s ever wanted.


End file.
